here and now

Future of facebook

Justina — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 20:12:37 +0000

iMedia Connection on the future of Facebook

Facebook will eventually become part of what philosopher Martin Heidegger would call the background of everydayness — something that simply „is.“ And some people will really like it, and it will provide them with the kind of social interaction they are incapable of getting from the three-dimensional world around them. And some people will turn it off, never to bask in its glow again.

Isn’t that future already here?

Taken from Enowing.

Heiddeger and Char

Justina — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 15:57:44 +0000

Milan Kundera on friendship

In our time people have learned to subordinate friendship to what’s called “convictions.“ And even with a prideful tone of moral correctness. It does take great maturity to understand that the opinion we are arguing for is merely the hypothesis we favor, necessarily imperfect, probably transitory, which only very limited minds can declare to be a certainty or a truth. Unlike the puerile loyalty to a conviction, loyalty to a friend is a virtue — perhaps the only virtue, the last remaining one.

I look at a photograph of the poet René Char alongside Heidegger. The one celebrated as a French résistant to the German occupation, the other denigrated for sympathizing with early Nazism at one point in his life. The photo dates from the postwar years. The two are pictured from the rear; with caps on their heads, one figure tall, the other short, they are taking a walk in the outdoors.

- Milan Kundera. Encounter (2009). Pp. 113-114.

Found at and taken from Enowning.

The Mountains’ Friend

Justina — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 14:47:55 +0000

The broad arms of this dusty world
Hold few true friends.
One feels the pangs of loneliness, and sees
How cold the autumn air becomes!
But no, behold your search is ended here,
For countless mountains,
Blue afar, and green ones near,
Remain your friends eternally.

- Jakushitsu Genko Zenji (1290–1368)

Tao Ruspoli on Drugs and Heidegger

Justina — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 17:36:16 +0000

Drugs and Technicity: A Heideggerian Inquiry into the Evolution of Drug Use

***

„You must always be intoxicated… In order not to feel the horrible burden of Time which breaks your back and bends you down to earth, you must be unremittingly intoxicated. But on what? Wine, poetry, virtue, as you please…And if it should chance that sometimes, on the steps of a palace, on the green grass of a ditch, in the bleak solitude of your room, you wake up and your intoxication has already diminished or disappeared, ask the wind, the wave, the star, the bird, the clock, ask everything that flees, everything that groans, everything that rolls, everything that sings, everything that speaks, ask them what time it is and the wind, the wave, the star, the bird, the clock, will reply: „It’s time to be intoxicated! If you do not wish to be one of the tortured slaves of Time, never be sober; never ever be sober! Use wine, poetry, or virtue, as you please.“

- Charles Baudelaire

„Opium cannot bear impatient addicts… It moves away, leaving them morphine, heroin, suicide and death.“

- Jean Cocteau

***

The use of drugs has undeniably played an important role throughout human history. Each culture, with the exception of the Eskimos before the west introduced them to alcohol, has accepted at least one mind altering drug as a part of its tradition and practices. Drug use has also always been controversial. Each culture has had strong negative opinions of certain drugs while accepting and even encouraging the use of others. However, it was almost always the case that the drugs attacked in one society were accepted in another. For instance, whereas American Indians used tobacco in their religious ceremonies, the Turks would sentence to death anyone caught with the same drug. Some Indian Yogis encourage the use of marijuana while condemning the use of opiates or alcohol. Muslim cultures, on the other hand, tolerate opium use but also do not accept the use of alcohol. In the twentieth century, especially in the west, we have witnessed a brand new phenomenon: the creation and use of new drugs which no culture views as valuable. Subsequently, drugs in general have suddenly come under tremendous attack. Synthetic drugs like heroin, cocaine, or cigarettes, for example, are understood to have no redeeming qualities even by those who use them most regularly. Nevertheless, it is drugs like these which are most widely used and abused in today’s cultures.

It is my purpose in this paper to trace the history and evolution of the use of mind altering drugs from a Heideggerian perspective. The questions to be answered thus fall into three categories: first, what role did drug use play in the past; second, how has the use of and the attitude toward drugs changed; and finally, what other social phenomena can be seen to have caused this change to take place. Using Martin Heidegger’s essay on „the Thing,“ I will attempt to analyze the possible reasons why so many cultures have incorporated drug use for so long, and why they have played such an important role in their rituals and practices. Next, it will be helpful to analyze the same philosopher’s essay entitled „The Question Concerning Technology“ to shed some light on the nature of the above mentioned new drugs. Heidegger’s essay on Nietzsche will help us understand why these drugs have gained so much popularity despite the fact that they generate such general mistrust. Finally, we will search for some solutions to the problems today’s drugs have undeniably caused.

***

READ MORE …

Find out Yourself

Justina — Tue, 01 Nov 2011 00:01:24 +0000

A monk coming out of a monastery under the leadership of Rinzai, met a party of three traveling monks belonging to another Buddhist school over a river on a bridge.

One of the three ventured to ask the Zen monk:
„How deep is the river of Zen?“

The monk, fresh from his own interview with Rinzai, who was noted for his direct actions lost no time in replying.

„Find out for yourself,“ he said and offered to throw the questioner from the bridge.

Portrait of a Woman

Justina — Thu, 27 Oct 2011 20:27:49 +0000

She must be a variety.
Change so that nothing will change.
It’s easy, impossible, tough going, worth a shot.
Her eyes are, as required, deep, blue, gray,
dark merry, full of pointless tears.
She sleeps with him as if she’s first in line or the only one on earth.
She’ll bear him four children, no children, one.
Naive, but gives the best advice.
Weak, but takes on anything.
A screw loose and though as nails.
Curls up with Jasper or Ladies’Home Journal.
Can’t figure out this bolt and builds a bridge.
Young, young as ever, still looking young.
Holds in her hand a baby sparrow with a broken wing,
her own money for some trip far away,
a meat cleaver, a compress, a glass of vodka.
Where’s she running, isn’t she exhausted.
Not a bit, a little, to death, it doesn’t matter.
She must love him, or she’s just plain stubborn.
For better, for worse, for heaven’s sake.

~ Wisława Szymborska

Thus spoke Justina

Justina — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 11:53:54 +0000

Look, brothers&sisters, time goes on forever; everything that can happen is going to happen, and then it’s going to happen again. Are you okay with that? Can you stomach the thought of living your life again and again, with no regrets? Not just stomach it; does that thought make you happy? If it doesn’t, then you’ve got some work to do. Here are some good places to start: Dance more often. Laugh at EVERYTHING. And above all else, Thyne own will be done, not anyone else’s. Anyone who tells you it’s not fair or it’s not right or that you should do anything you don’t want to is lying to you, and I promise you they’re miserable and mediocre. Be done with that. It’s not that you only get one life – if only it were that simple. You get more lives than you can imagine, but only one. fucking. chance. to define them for eternity.

Stop wasting it.

Go and live, now and forever!

Nietzsche

Inside (All) of Us

Justina — Sat, 26 Feb 2011 09:40:59 +0000

jäljen

Justina — Tue, 15 Feb 2011 14:13:00 +0000

jäljen

vangitaan hetki
muuttuu ikuiseksi
kuva on tie
hiljaisuuden polku
vangitaan toivo
muuttuu kallioiksi
sameiksi silmät suru ikuiseksi
vangitaan laulu lauseet lyötäviksi
ruosteiseksi kieli sanat vaskisiksi
ruosteiseksi nitovi rauta
syvästä maasta

route

wrap the day wasted by suns
portray a numb path
wrap all hope waning bliss
eyes mist
mien of despair
wrap a song mute phrase
rusty tongue words but copper
bound with iron threads
risen from clay

Take It Easy

Justina — Sat, 18 Dec 2010 11:32:01 +0000